My Story Begins: The Birth of a Romance Reader...

how I became a romance reader.  I always liked books and remember spending one summer reading a ton of Nancy Drew books that had been given to me.  There was UBS near my home and I remember buying a lot of Harlequins & Regency romances there.  I read so much that one summer I went to a family get-together and my aunt thought I'd been sick because I was so pale.  Nope - I'd been reading too much in the house!  I started reading outside after that!

I enjoy reading - rarely watch TV - or I read during the commercials!

I remember when I was younger being turned off books for a while because we were told what to read. That takes a lot of the enjoyment out of the book. I have an older sister and she had Jackie Collins books so I would sneak those. My reading habits were kind of soratic til about 8 years ago. Now I just devour books. I don't watch a lot of tv and I'm reading during commercials. Half the time the tv is on an I'll be reading an ebook cause none of the shows are must sees.

BTW I getting the nagging from my sister "why do you need all those book"

I don't ever remember time that I didn't read and I loved fairy tales. I started reading romances as a teen, but not quite at the level I read them now. My current level of reading romances happened after I started having babies. I needed something I could hold in one hand and could set down and pick up and jump right back into the story.

I've read my entire life and I guess I was 10 or 11 years old when I ran out of books. My mother was a reader of romance novels so I snuck one of hers and I've been hooked ever since.  My first few novels were Harlequin Presents...eventually I moved onto a Johanna Lindsay library book.  I had to hide that I read them for a long time, but I've never looked back.

Wow....  are you my secret twin or something???  You just pretty much repeated my story exactly! 

My earliest memory of books was back in Grade 1...  I read all the books on our shelves, I devoured them, taking home the maximum amount of books we were allowed to take home each night, and bringing them back and getting a sticker for each book read.  I filled my pages with stickers and the teacher was getting a little pissed off at me and I think she must have thought I was LYING about reading all the books.  Eventually she let me raid a older grade's book shelves in the classroom next door.  The "chapter books" in those classrooms kept me busy.  I was happy to find a book that took me more than 2 minutes to read.

Then I switched schools, and proceeded to raid the shelves of my new school's classrooms and library.  I settled in to reading tons and tons of Nancy Drews, Sweet Valley books, and Scholastic Book club books....  :p 

Then when I was 11, we moved houses.  All my books had been packed away, and I found a box of my mom's books hanging around in the living room and snuck one to read.  It was a Harlequin Presents book, "Innocent Obsession" (I think that was the title).  I don't really remember there being any truly naughty bits, I was probably too young to pay attention and it was a book from the early 80s I think, but I loved the romance.  Once we settled in to the new house, I eventually raided my mom's new book shelf and read all the romances she had there: there were a couple HPs and various other Harlequin lines.  There were only like, 20 books though!  And I got through those fast. 

Then I was at the library and turned a corner and saw the ROMANCE section, and my jaw pretty much dropped at the shelves upon shelves of books there.  I took out like, one or two dozen at a time!   When the siblings/parents eventually saw what I was reading, I got teased a bit, but by high school I was like "shove it, I'm gonna read all I want".  And so yeah...  I've kept on reading romances, mainly HPs, and some SDs, HBs, and paranormal romances.  In university I did an English minor and read all the "classics" I was supposed to, while reading romances on the side.  It was funny because my profs always SNEERED at Harlequins and I just wanted to give 'em a slap upside the head. 

Haven't paused reading except when I'm busy with life, and I still devour books at an alarmingly expensive rate.  *grin*  I have boxes upon boxes of books I've bought, and I recently discovered you can buy huge lots of books off of eBay and Kijiji, so my collection is never ending at this point.

and also looking forward to someone who'll give me a run for my money (though other members have improved their reading speed since they've known me LOL )

I taught myself to read before I went to school and had even read the first five books of the Old Testament in the family bible (that weighs 13 kg) when I ran out of other books to read. I regularly ran out of library books (because we lived in a town with a small local public library) and thought I was in heaven when I first visited big municipal libraries in Dublin and London. I'm not currently a member of a town library because they don't have English books but my own home resembles a library as I have about five thousand English books and probably about the same in French - I can read in either language but have a preference for reading the original version rather than a translation when possible

As my profile says, I'm a readaholic and anyone in here who hasn't realised that by now just isn't paying attention

Hugs and welcome to the challenge

Sadhbh

p.s. there are some monthly summary posts under my blog if you'd like to see what I've been reading since January - it might be quicker than going through the thirty-something pages of blog entries

That's hilarious.  Your mother's not a teacher, by any chance is she?

Nilielle, isn't that the Jamaican flag?  If you tell me you live in Jamaica, I'm going to be extremely jealous. 

My reading story is in the bio on my profile.  It's much too long to do over again here! LOL.  Anyway, I've been reading since I was 4.5.  My saintly (ADD? Vikki) mother read books like Nancy Drew and Little Women to me and my oldest brother before we could really fully understand them - but it helped anyway.  It made me want to read it all for myself.  And now I read, and I write.  Then I read and write.  There's not stopping the cycle!  <GG>

I'm having trouble remembering properly, but I would say I became a reader in 5th grade.  Oh, I read kid books before that... Dr. Suess (sp?), Stan the Hot Dog Man, Sammy the Seal, Curious George, etc... I participated in the reading challenges the elementary school had.  Book-It, the Read-a-thon, etc.  But I really got into reading toward the end of 5th grade.  My "best friend" told me she saw me to much, and I was left floundering. 

So I started reading.  I was really into it by middle school.  I joined the library club.  I would get up early to read, would pretend I was using the bathroom so I could read instead of doing homework after school, and I would use the bathroom light glowing down the hall and later a lavalamp to sneak in reading past my bed time.

As for getting into romance, it was a gradual thing.  Many of the coming-of-age books and YA books I read had a touch of romance (teenage crushes and all), I remember being embarrassed when I realized Alanna had sex in Tamora Pierce's Lioness Quartet books.  And my ma, while not reading often, would have books around that I would check out - and they usually had at least touches of romance.  I'm a firm believer - from my reading experience - in the idea that pretty much all fiction genres have some romance.  Mysteries, Sci-fi/fantasy, even westerns.  So I don't know when I started reading straight romance.  But I started reading to Harlequin books in late high-school... beginning with a "Best of the Best" subcription (which I think was mostly MIRA?).  I suspect I was drawn in by the free books.

I did hide my romance reading.  I had one friend that also read romances, another friend that teased me but we were close so she still knew.  It was a secret from everyone else.  Still is mostly except from close family and online peeps.

Anyway, that's my story.